Veteran Lies and Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday, a date that has the most states voting simultaneously and the most delegates up for grabs in the nominating calendar, will take place today as 15 states hold primary elections for the 2024 Presidential Election. The 16 states that will vote on Super Tuesday are: Alabama; Alaska; Arkansas; California; Colorado; Iowa; Maine; Massachusetts; Minnesota; North Carolina; Oklahoma; Tennessee; Texas; Utah; Vermont; and Virginia.
While Alaska will only vote on Republican candidates today, and Iowa will only cast votes for Democratic candidates, more than one-third of the total delegates for each party will be determined. The territory of American Samoa will also cast ballots in the Democratic race.
Author Barbara Norrander, emeritus professor in the school of government and public policy at the University of Arizona and the author of the 1994 book "Super Tuesday," dates the beginning of Super Tuesday to 1988. Norrander credits the impetus of this political event stemming from southern states wanting to coordinate to nominate a more moderate candidate.
There are 865 Republican delegates available in today’s Super Tuesday elections. The Republican nominee will need 1,215 delegates out of 2,429 to secure the party’s nomination. So far, 331 Republican delegates have been allocated from 11 states, with Donald Trump holding 276 of the delegate count. A complete sweep in all of today’s races would put Trump close to the number needed to clinch the Republican Party’s nomination.
Today’s elections come on the heels of a pivotal US Supreme Court ruling yesterday, where all nine Justices were unanimous in determining that Donald Trump cannot be kept off the ballot in the State of Colorado for inciting the January 6 insurrection, because the state lacks the authority to do so. "Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse," the high Court concluded.
While the majority of the Supreme Court ultimately determined that the State of Colorado was not able to disqualify Donald Trump from the primary ballot, the three liberal-leaning justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, made a point to criticize the majority opinion for deciding "momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily." Those justices said the majority overreached when it set out ways Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should be enforced, and ultimately created "a special rule for the insurrection disability," which could have dangerous ramifications down the road.
While it is not likely that many Trump supporters will take the time to fully understand the ruling yesterday, Trump’s bragging bluster on his Truth Social network will paint the skewed picture he wants headed into today’s elections with the following short message: “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!” Trump also wasted no time in using the Supreme Court ruling to fundraise by sending out the following message:
Additionally, the Trump Campaign made a point to carefully craft a message full of bombastic lies and empty bluster at a rally on Saturday in North Carolina, a state where the highways welcome visitors with signs that read: “the nation’s most military friendly state.”
Among voters in this year's South Carolina Republican primary, AP VoteCast found that close to two-thirds of military veterans and people in veteran households voted for Trump over his opponent, Nikki Haley. This was in Haley’s home state, where she enjoyed great popularity as the former Republican Governor.
Greensboro appeared to be the Trump template for appealing to veteran and military voters, as thousands of supporters attended his rally there this weekend. During the event where Trump continued his usual talking points — that included bashing President Biden and border control — he also made a well-calculated point to take credit for one of President Obama’s achievements in 2014: signing the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act.
The first time Trump falsely took credit for Obama’s bill, meant to significantly improve veterans’ access to medical care, was on June 6, 2018, when Trump signed the Mission Act. That law was a modest update to the bi-partisan Veterans Choice legislation that had been previously established during Obama’s administartion. Trump nonetheless combined the two bills in order to take credit for all of it.
While none of this behavior is surprising, the tall tales he continues to tell his supporters are meant to bolster his record in states where veteran turnout will be high, and the Super Tuesday results will determine if it is working. Among the 16 states and one territory casting ballots in Tuesday’s 2024 presidential primaries and caucuses, are some with the nation’s highest rates of active-duty service members and largest populations of veterans: Texas, California, Virginia and North Carolina.
Democrats are making a push to emphasize Trump's dangerous foreign policy and past comments to argue that he does not support the US military. Before South Carolina’s Republican primary, Trump bragged to a crowd that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want ” to NATO countries that don’t meet defense spending targets. It is this kind of extreme departure from the tenants of veterans and military families that could be a real problem for Trump in a face-off with Biden this November.
Cal Cunningham, North Carolina Democrats’ 2020 nominee for US Senate and an Army reservist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, warns that veterans in his state are not so easily swayed by the Trump rhetoric. Democrats’ ability to focus on the military values that Donald Trump seems to brazenly disregard could determine which candidate receives North Carolina's 15 electoral votes this fall, a highly sought after prize. “[North Carolina is] going to be part of where the presidency is won and lost,” says Cunningham.
While the Super Tuesday elections will be big for the Democratic Party as well, Joe Biden is expected to overwhelmingly defeat his challengers: the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, a self-help author who last week “un-suspended” her campaign. At play today is the success of a cheap, over-played MAGA rhetoric within the veteran community, which deserves better.
Trump has given us a glimpse of what he intends to sell again this year, and Democrats seem poised to counter the lies within a savvy military community who should know better. Consider today’s elections a test run for November, that is affording the Democratic Party with a map to winning some southern states.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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